4:30am the alarm went off this morning which was early enough but not helped by a loud group of people arriving at the guest house at 2:30am!! We dressed, had some breakfast and were in the road by 6am heading through the streets of Kampala which were jammed with people, some from the night before, some from their early starts.

We were soon through Kampala and heading into more rural areas on our journey to Murchison Falls National Park! It was a 6 hour journey that started with nice metalled roads but about halfway in became dirt roads where the dust at some points made the route and incoming traffic completely disappear! Along the way we spotted a few monkeys and baboons!! Finally we reached the River Nile and had to cross on a short ferry ride. The river is nothing short of spectacular! As we headed off the other side we spotted our first elephant! Soon after we arrive at our safari lodge, which is lovely! We grabbed some lunch and then had a couple of hours to chill out before the evening game drive.

We were treated in that time to a pretty amazing tropical thunder storm!! This cleared up just in time for our game drive. We headed out into the park with our guide on our open topped vehicle. It started fairly slowly with sightings of baboons, Ugandan cob and jacksons hartman (I think that’s what they were called). The rest of the drive was difficult to put into words as we saw giraffes, elephants, warthogs, lions and a whole heap of birds. We were within 10 metres of a group of feeding giraffes which was amazing. A little further up the road we were able to get out of the vehicles to follow a group of giraffes for giraffe selfies. This was unreal!! But 400 yards or so up the road (having got back in) we came across a male and female lion and again got within 10 metres of them. I can’t explain in words how amazing this was, sitting on top of the roof of our vehicle that close to lions in their natural environment. I have to say I jumped pretty sharpish back inside the vehicle when the lion eyeballed me and then went on to give a pretty ferocious roar! Shortly after this we found their cubs too, 5 of them playing like kittens!! Over the rest of the journey we saw lots more giraffes and a few more elephants as well as a plethora of hartmans, warthogs, buffalo, cob and lots of birds.
The whole thing was simply an incredible experience of the wildlife of Africa getting up close and personal with the most amazing animals all the while sitting on top of our vehicle with an African wind blowing in our hair! It was an immense privilege and outstanding experience that will stay with me forever.

Tomorrow we have a 5am get up so now I need to be getting my head down in preparation for an early morning game drive!